1) The document envisions a typical day in the life of a family in the year 2041, where all aspects of daily life are highly connected through technology, including personal assistants, connected homes, vehicles, and education. 2) It argues that while the future may seem mysterious, the core technologies used in 2041 will likely be similar to those used today, but will be more integrated and connected. Education, jobs, and daily life will heavily rely on and connect to technology. 3) Access to high-speed internet globally will further connect communities and reduce barriers, though affordability remains a challenge. Overall, technology will be more seamlessly integrated into daily life rather than radical new inventions.

1. DavidCompton
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The Connected World of 2041
The year is 2041. As you wake up in the morning you blink a couple of times to scan through the
morning headlines. You find an article you want to read and with the swipe of your hand through
the air, the article appears on the wall in front of you, but you don’t have to read it. Your
personal electronic assistant is dictating it for you. You are free to go about getting in the
shower, which has already been turned on and set to the perfect temperature. You have to be
quick because water is a precious commodity. The kids have already gotten dressed and their
own personal assistants are going over their homework from the night before. An alert pops into
your eye that it looks like rain today, so you get the kids their jackets. On the way to school you
go over the lesson plans that their teachers have sent out to all of their students. There is a quiz
today so your car starts quizzing your kids on the Mayan Civilization as you stop for a quick
coffee at the Starbucks. You forgot your card today so they just scan your wrist and the money is
taken out of your electronic wallet. Everything in your life is connected and more importantly
you are connected to everything in your life.
It is sometimes easy to think of the future as mysterious. The year 2041 could hold so many great
things when it comes to technology, but are we really that far off from what it will probably be? I
tend to think that the technologies that we are using today are going to be the same technologies
we use 23 years from now. The difference is going to be in how we use them and how they all
connect to one another. There was a time where a new technology was radical and mind blowing.
It happened so quick that for a time you truly believed that there might be flying cars or that we
would all own self-tying shoes and hover boards, but there are some limitations to what we can
produce. It’s a physics thing. However, the things we have today are awesome and far beyond

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what you might have thought possible 23 years ago. My goal with this paper is to talk about the
things that we will be using 23 years from now and how they will be designed to create
connections between your life, job, school, and every other part of your being. Connectivity is
the future.
Let’s start with Education. Education has been changing for as long as we know it, but the
structure of education has largely remained the same. However, recently there has been a push
for more alternative style and online learning at an early age. Between the 2009-10 and 2013-14
academic years there was an 80% increase in the number of students interested in online or
blended education (https://www.connectionsacademy.com/news/growth-of-k-12-online-
education-infographic). At the same time the number of school districts in the United States
offering online options increased 50%. At one point you might have heard of online programs for
those in college, but today K-12 institutions are allowing online learning for younger students.
In 2041, I think we will see a lot more of these online learning opportunities. According to a blog
on nerdymates.com a Babson Survey Research Group reported that 71% of students think that
virtual learning provides more flexibility and freedom to take classes
(https://nerdymates.com/blog/education-future). Having classes online will lead to having more
data to share with those who need it. Students and parents already have access to their academic
progress thanks to programs like Naviance that allows students to connect their education
towards the goal of secondary education. Even if students are still in traditional classrooms 23
years from now, their learning will be largely online and the teacher will become more of a guide
on how to use new technologies as opposed to the all-knowing authority of the classroom.

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Hopefully, in 2041 students will have a clearer goal of what careers are going to be the best for
them. As an admissions professional I feel that there is a lot of confusion when it comes to
connected education and training to career goals. Some of that has to do with the nature of a
young, developing mind, but students are figuring out later than necessary that what they do in
school can have a direct impact on their career. The types of jobs that will be available are going
to be tech jobs, obviously. Regardless of what industry you are in there is going to be a strong
reliance on using current technologies to improve your work. Production lines are using
computers and electronics to make their processes safer and more reliable. Car industries are
requiring more knowledge of computer interfacing to connect your car to your home and leisure
time. Even in the construction industry you see a move towards more technologically advanced
procedures. 3-D printing is now a viable option for building portions of homes. Nano-particle
paint is a newer technology that has an exceptionally hard surface, is self-cleaning, and can
change colors (Goodman, 2016). Every part of industry will have something to do with
technology so the education for these jobs is going to need to be steeped in technology.
In my first paragraph I gave a scenario of the morning of a family in 2041. Obviously some of
that stuff might not happen, but for the most part we already have the technologies in place that
would allow us to connect our daily lives to each other. These personal assistants already exist
and many homes use them. Perhaps, using the nano-particle paint I just mentioned, our walls will
be able to display images. Google has already created contact lenses that can act as screens.
Google’s smart contact lens allows your eye to become a computer, much like Google Glass
does for your glasses (Anthony, 2014). Our day to day home lives are going to be much like they
are now, but the devices we use are going to be a little different. Instead of buying TVs we might
be able to have a wall in our home act as that device. Our phones, while still important, will be

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able to display directly into our eye. When we drive around our cars are going to know what we
have planned for the day and be able to prepare certain things for us. It will all be connected so
we are never without technology.
Just like it has been since 1990, when the World Wide Web was launched, the internet is going
to be a huge catalyst in further connecting communities across the globe. Using data and the
internet we are going to use the devices we own to connect individually with people from
thousands of miles away. The barriers we have today are largely language related as well as parts
of the world still having dreadfully slow data rates. These slow internet rates are something that
is of concern and is being addressed by many in the business and tech fields. “Affordability is
probably the single most important aspect” of getting internet to the whole world (El-Darwiche,
Herzog, Singh, Samad, Elmir, Goel, 2016). The world is working on solutions to this as we
speak.
So, what will the world be like 23 years from now? Again, I don’t think it will look and feel
much different than today. It was almost 20 years ago that Apple launched the iPod with the new
ability to listen to music as mp3s. That technology has not changed much in the last 20 years, but
the way that we listen to them and how we connect to them has. That is going to be the biggest
change we will see. Our shirts are going to have connectivity to your devices to keep you warmer
on cold days, or to let you know when you are perspiring. Our shoes are going to be able to let us
keep track of the miles on them and when the rubber is breaking down. Our phones are going to
completely replace our wallets because all of our information and buying power will be right
there at the end of our hand. It will all be connected from the moment we wake up until the time

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that we close our eyes to sleep. Just don’t forget to power off that contact lens. You don’t want
the 24-hour news cycle keeping you awake at night.

6. DavidCompton
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References
Connections Academy. Retrieved from https://www.connectionsacademy.com/news/growth-of-
k-12-online-education-infographic
Nerdy Mates. A glimpse at how education will possibly look in 2050. Retrieved from
https://nerdymates.com/blog/education-future
Goodman, J. (2016, August 2). Five technologies that will change the future of home building.
Retrieved from http://www.ecobuildingpulse.com/news/five-technologies-that-will-
change-the-future-of-home-building_s
Anthony, S. (2014, April 15). Google invents contact lens with built-in camera: Superhuman
Terminator-like vision here we come. Retrieved from
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/180571-google-invents-smart-contact-lens-with-
built-in-camera-superhuman-terminator-like-vision-here-we-come